Here are some articles from one of my favorite blogs, by Max Velocity. I am currently reading and almost done with Patriot Dawn, and have Contact and Rapid Fire to read next. So far I am impressed with the book, it is a good read, with tons of great info in it. From reading his stuff so far, I can say that there is not an article he has written that I did not agree with at least 95% of the time. So with that said, check out these articles.
There will be no theme music
Countering aerial thermal surveillance
Thermal Poncho
The concept of the thermal poncho, or blanket is of vital importance to us, and should be a part of each of our kits. We will not have any success in our fight if we are suseptable to thermal surveillance. We have to ensure every means of increasing our survivability. Without items like this in our loadout, we will not be of much use to our nation in it's time of need.
Friday, September 27, 2013
Thursday, September 19, 2013
Combat Casualties
Here is another article by Max Velocity, I just find his articles so good I have to put them up for you guys. I just bought his books by the way, I will read them and do book reviews here when I am done.
SHTF Combat Casualty - Considerations & Realities
On my CRCD class, I don't have time to do a full class on TC3 (Tactical Combat Casualty Care). However, what I do is give a few pointers as to how causalities will fit into the game in a real SHTF contact situation.
When I train people in patrol break contact drills, I explain that it is like practicing a fire emergency drill. The fire alarm goes off, we all head downstairs and rally in the parking lot. Simple. But in the reality of a fire, we may not all get out, it may be a smoke and flame filled confusion, and we may take casualties. It's the same for break contact drills.
So, we practice our choreographed drills and at the level of the CRCD class I don't even throw in casualties. The worst case reality of a break contact drill, facing a well sited enemy ambush, is that you may get out crawling down a creek bed dragging your wounded buddy. Or you may not get out at all. But that is worst case.
Break contact drills are 'Oh Shit' emergency drills and there are worst case scenarios. The other side of that is that with a well executed drill, even though you are doing the drill to ultimately get away, you may react and hit the enemy in such an effective way that you leave them reeling, wondering what happened as you "faded away into the woods."
In the immortal words of Captain Jack Sparrow of 'Pirates of the Caribbean' fame: "We will fight them, to run away."
The main point that I want to bring out today is firstly the effect of casualties on your drill, and secondly the effect that SHTF will have on your TC3 procedures.
Firstly, the hardest thing you will do is going to probably be evacuating a casualty under enemy fire. Moving a casualty is very hard. Initially, you will be dragging the casualty by his gear every bound back that you make. You will move, dragging the casualty, covered by the other buddy pair. Then, you will stop, take a fire position, and fire to cover the withdrawal of the other buddy pair. As you get further away from the contact, creating a breathing space, you can consider reorganizing slightly so that, depending on the size of your team, there is an element moving the casualty and an element fire and moving back to cover that. For a four man team with one casualty, that will mean one person moving the casualty, whether by dragging or the Hawes carry, and the other two bounding back to cover that move.
Once you rally up out of contact, you can reorganize, again your numbers will determine exactly how you do that (are you a team or a squad?), to create a litter carry party and a security party to cover the move out.
Secondly, let's look at the reality of TC3 in an SHTF situation:
There are three phases to TC3:
1) Care under fire
2) Tactical Field Care
3) Evacuation
In the Care under Fire phase, the primary thing you must concentrate on is fighting the battle. If you are breaking contact that means do that. Don't do anything that will cause more casualties, such as running out in the open to get that downed point man, unless you have first suppressed the enemy.
Th only intervention you, or the casualty, can do in the Care under Fire phase is to apply a hasty tourniquet 'high and tight' on a wounded limb to stop imminent death from extremity bleeding. As a team you will be going through your individual RTR drills, reacting to the contact, and then flowing into the break contact drill as appropriate. If you have a man down, you will simply have to grab him and drag him back on each bound you make back as part of your fire and movement.
Even in the care under fire phase, don't try and put a tourniquet on in an exposed position. Drag the guy into a semblance of cover, be practiced so you can whip it on and tighten it down quick either in the groin or armpit area, and then get on with firing and moving. If you kneel in the open to apply a tourniquet, you will be shot down.
If you are in some other contact situation where you are not actually moving and breaking contact, and you are engaged in a firefight with a casualty exposed in the open, then don't risk all to go to them. Concentrate on suppressing the enemy and winning the firefight. There are pretty much four things you can shout to them under TC3:
1) Can you return fire?
2) Can you apply self-aid? (i.e. hasty tourniquet high and tight)
3) Can you crawl to me?
4) Lay still! (so as not to draw more fire - don't tell them to "play dead", it's not good psychologically!)
But, dependent on the situation you find yourself in SHTF, there are some other considerations. You probably don't have back-up and there is no 'dust-off' medevac on the way. If the guy is obviously dead, grey matter on the ground or whatever, then look to the greater good of the team and fight out of there. SHTF will make you face some hard decisions. You may not be able to bring them all home. The other side of that is that wounds can be horrific and look a lot worse than they are. So long as the guy is breathing, even better screaming, then do your best to get him out of there, even though you may be repulsed and unsure how you could ever take care of such a nasty wound.
The next phase to look at is the Tactical Field Care phase. This is where training can diverge from the SHTF reality. In training, once you have suppressed the enemy and got the casualty to cover, then you can go into Tactical Field Care, which means taking care of H-ABC (now MARCH, same thing) and then the full assessment before packaging up the casualty (thermal blanket to prevent hypothermia, even in hot weather) and monitoring them for evacuation. This is where a whole bunch of interventions are possible. However, in SHTF I can't tell you who your enemy will be. Worst case, they are an aggressive force that will follow you up, potentially even a Regime style 'enemies foreign or domestic' hunter-killer force. If so, you will not be able to hang around in the rally point for longer than it takes to do a personnel check, tactical reloads, and maybe a quick intervention on the casualty. Other than that, if you hang around and they follow up into your hasty ambush established as part of the rally, you will be back in contact and will have to roll back into the break contact drills again, back to another rally point. Don't hang about after breaking contact.
In that sort of situation, you will have to do what you can for the casualty as you move back, creating further distance as you E&E away from the contact point. But here we hit another dilemma. You need to have equipment with you, and personnel, to carry the casualty. If you are using a litter, one casualty will take a squad to move - four on the litter at any one time, struggling, and the others pulling security as you move. You could use other methods, such as the ruck-style carry straps allowing one person to carry the casualty, but all this is going to be really hard work and make you slow.
Enter: more hard decisions: how badly wounded is the casualty? Do you have definitive care to get him back to? How hard are you being pursued? Can you take care of the pursuit with a hasty ambush, or are you in serious trouble? Can you move fast enough to get away while moving the casualty? Will the casualty survive the evacuation (which as non-medically trained personnel you may not even know)? If you leave the casualty, what will the enemy do to him? Maiming, torture, cannibals, interrogation? Is leaving the casualty a security risk to your teams operations and ultimate survival? Do you have a contingency plan for team members falling into enemy hands - can you move your FOB location faster than you expect him to break to interrogation?
No, I'm not advocating that you shoot your guy and leave him, or that he shoot himself. But this may be a time for a little volunteer heroics from the casualty, which always carries a risk of capture. It all just depends on the situation, and no doubt an SHTF or civil war/resistance type situation is going to throw up some really hard choices. Some of this ties in with comments that I have made before about dumping gear to get away, running off naked through the woods after having dumped all your gear to escape. The key here is to carry a load that you can move with, and shuffle-run out with if necessary, so you never have to dump all your weapons, ammo and gear even if you dump your patrol pack. If you are being closely pursued, whether you have a casualty or not, then you may face a choice of dumping everything and running, or you may turn and fight, hasty ambush, get close to the enemy negating indirect fire weapons, and maybe survive in the chaos, in the gaps. That is your choice and largely depends on what you are about i.e. what you see as your mission.
There is a time to live, a time to fight, and a time to die. All that really matters is how much it's going to hurt, right? If you are going to go out like a fighting bear, go out like a grizzly.
This leads us on to the last part, which is evacuation. The whole point, in a nutshell, of the TC3 protocols is basically to stabilize the casualty and keep them alive so that they can be evacuated back to definitive care, in military terms at the CASH (Combat Hospital). But in SHTF you will only have whatever medical care you have. Whether that is a medically trained person, or yourself having read up and taken some courses.
The interventions that you do under TC3 protocols rely on further definitive interventions back at the hospital to take care of the problem. You have to take that tourniquet off some time right? Are you going to clamp that artery? Do you have the equipment? You have to get a chest tube in to take care of the sucking chest wound and tension pneumothorax (collapsed lung), right? Can you get over your own feelings of revulsion at the gore and blood in order to be effective in helping your buddy or family member?
So ultimately, keeping the guy alive until you can get him out will then rely on being able to keep him further alive by definitive interventions. You may be back to an 1860's level of medicine, giving him a bottle of whisky to drink while you do what you can. So, you need to be able to clean, debride and suture wounds. You need to consider antibiotics, because back in the day infection was the major killer of those who initially survived their wounds. Think about use of betadine/sugar poultices and similar, as used by vets on horses.
So, ultimately what is my point? Like all military style doctrine, it has to be assessed and looked at from the perspective of an SHTF situation. TC3 is no different. It is really useful to train as a combat lifesaver or combat medic and to learn to do TC3. But make sure you have assessed the use of it in a non-military SHTF environment and consider the potential absence of definitive care as well as the need for people in your group to step into those gaps with useful skills.
Live Hard, Die Free.
MV
http://maxvelocitytactical.blogspot.com/2013/09/shtf-combat-casualty-considerations.html
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Click here for all your prepping/tactical needs: The Tactical Patriot Store
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SHTF Combat Casualty - Considerations & Realities
On my CRCD class, I don't have time to do a full class on TC3 (Tactical Combat Casualty Care). However, what I do is give a few pointers as to how causalities will fit into the game in a real SHTF contact situation.
When I train people in patrol break contact drills, I explain that it is like practicing a fire emergency drill. The fire alarm goes off, we all head downstairs and rally in the parking lot. Simple. But in the reality of a fire, we may not all get out, it may be a smoke and flame filled confusion, and we may take casualties. It's the same for break contact drills.
So, we practice our choreographed drills and at the level of the CRCD class I don't even throw in casualties. The worst case reality of a break contact drill, facing a well sited enemy ambush, is that you may get out crawling down a creek bed dragging your wounded buddy. Or you may not get out at all. But that is worst case.
Break contact drills are 'Oh Shit' emergency drills and there are worst case scenarios. The other side of that is that with a well executed drill, even though you are doing the drill to ultimately get away, you may react and hit the enemy in such an effective way that you leave them reeling, wondering what happened as you "faded away into the woods."
In the immortal words of Captain Jack Sparrow of 'Pirates of the Caribbean' fame: "We will fight them, to run away."
The main point that I want to bring out today is firstly the effect of casualties on your drill, and secondly the effect that SHTF will have on your TC3 procedures.
Firstly, the hardest thing you will do is going to probably be evacuating a casualty under enemy fire. Moving a casualty is very hard. Initially, you will be dragging the casualty by his gear every bound back that you make. You will move, dragging the casualty, covered by the other buddy pair. Then, you will stop, take a fire position, and fire to cover the withdrawal of the other buddy pair. As you get further away from the contact, creating a breathing space, you can consider reorganizing slightly so that, depending on the size of your team, there is an element moving the casualty and an element fire and moving back to cover that. For a four man team with one casualty, that will mean one person moving the casualty, whether by dragging or the Hawes carry, and the other two bounding back to cover that move.
Once you rally up out of contact, you can reorganize, again your numbers will determine exactly how you do that (are you a team or a squad?), to create a litter carry party and a security party to cover the move out.
Secondly, let's look at the reality of TC3 in an SHTF situation:
There are three phases to TC3:
1) Care under fire
2) Tactical Field Care
3) Evacuation
In the Care under Fire phase, the primary thing you must concentrate on is fighting the battle. If you are breaking contact that means do that. Don't do anything that will cause more casualties, such as running out in the open to get that downed point man, unless you have first suppressed the enemy.
Th only intervention you, or the casualty, can do in the Care under Fire phase is to apply a hasty tourniquet 'high and tight' on a wounded limb to stop imminent death from extremity bleeding. As a team you will be going through your individual RTR drills, reacting to the contact, and then flowing into the break contact drill as appropriate. If you have a man down, you will simply have to grab him and drag him back on each bound you make back as part of your fire and movement.
Even in the care under fire phase, don't try and put a tourniquet on in an exposed position. Drag the guy into a semblance of cover, be practiced so you can whip it on and tighten it down quick either in the groin or armpit area, and then get on with firing and moving. If you kneel in the open to apply a tourniquet, you will be shot down.
If you are in some other contact situation where you are not actually moving and breaking contact, and you are engaged in a firefight with a casualty exposed in the open, then don't risk all to go to them. Concentrate on suppressing the enemy and winning the firefight. There are pretty much four things you can shout to them under TC3:
1) Can you return fire?
2) Can you apply self-aid? (i.e. hasty tourniquet high and tight)
3) Can you crawl to me?
4) Lay still! (so as not to draw more fire - don't tell them to "play dead", it's not good psychologically!)
But, dependent on the situation you find yourself in SHTF, there are some other considerations. You probably don't have back-up and there is no 'dust-off' medevac on the way. If the guy is obviously dead, grey matter on the ground or whatever, then look to the greater good of the team and fight out of there. SHTF will make you face some hard decisions. You may not be able to bring them all home. The other side of that is that wounds can be horrific and look a lot worse than they are. So long as the guy is breathing, even better screaming, then do your best to get him out of there, even though you may be repulsed and unsure how you could ever take care of such a nasty wound.
The next phase to look at is the Tactical Field Care phase. This is where training can diverge from the SHTF reality. In training, once you have suppressed the enemy and got the casualty to cover, then you can go into Tactical Field Care, which means taking care of H-ABC (now MARCH, same thing) and then the full assessment before packaging up the casualty (thermal blanket to prevent hypothermia, even in hot weather) and monitoring them for evacuation. This is where a whole bunch of interventions are possible. However, in SHTF I can't tell you who your enemy will be. Worst case, they are an aggressive force that will follow you up, potentially even a Regime style 'enemies foreign or domestic' hunter-killer force. If so, you will not be able to hang around in the rally point for longer than it takes to do a personnel check, tactical reloads, and maybe a quick intervention on the casualty. Other than that, if you hang around and they follow up into your hasty ambush established as part of the rally, you will be back in contact and will have to roll back into the break contact drills again, back to another rally point. Don't hang about after breaking contact.
In that sort of situation, you will have to do what you can for the casualty as you move back, creating further distance as you E&E away from the contact point. But here we hit another dilemma. You need to have equipment with you, and personnel, to carry the casualty. If you are using a litter, one casualty will take a squad to move - four on the litter at any one time, struggling, and the others pulling security as you move. You could use other methods, such as the ruck-style carry straps allowing one person to carry the casualty, but all this is going to be really hard work and make you slow.
Enter: more hard decisions: how badly wounded is the casualty? Do you have definitive care to get him back to? How hard are you being pursued? Can you take care of the pursuit with a hasty ambush, or are you in serious trouble? Can you move fast enough to get away while moving the casualty? Will the casualty survive the evacuation (which as non-medically trained personnel you may not even know)? If you leave the casualty, what will the enemy do to him? Maiming, torture, cannibals, interrogation? Is leaving the casualty a security risk to your teams operations and ultimate survival? Do you have a contingency plan for team members falling into enemy hands - can you move your FOB location faster than you expect him to break to interrogation?
No, I'm not advocating that you shoot your guy and leave him, or that he shoot himself. But this may be a time for a little volunteer heroics from the casualty, which always carries a risk of capture. It all just depends on the situation, and no doubt an SHTF or civil war/resistance type situation is going to throw up some really hard choices. Some of this ties in with comments that I have made before about dumping gear to get away, running off naked through the woods after having dumped all your gear to escape. The key here is to carry a load that you can move with, and shuffle-run out with if necessary, so you never have to dump all your weapons, ammo and gear even if you dump your patrol pack. If you are being closely pursued, whether you have a casualty or not, then you may face a choice of dumping everything and running, or you may turn and fight, hasty ambush, get close to the enemy negating indirect fire weapons, and maybe survive in the chaos, in the gaps. That is your choice and largely depends on what you are about i.e. what you see as your mission.
There is a time to live, a time to fight, and a time to die. All that really matters is how much it's going to hurt, right? If you are going to go out like a fighting bear, go out like a grizzly.
This leads us on to the last part, which is evacuation. The whole point, in a nutshell, of the TC3 protocols is basically to stabilize the casualty and keep them alive so that they can be evacuated back to definitive care, in military terms at the CASH (Combat Hospital). But in SHTF you will only have whatever medical care you have. Whether that is a medically trained person, or yourself having read up and taken some courses.
The interventions that you do under TC3 protocols rely on further definitive interventions back at the hospital to take care of the problem. You have to take that tourniquet off some time right? Are you going to clamp that artery? Do you have the equipment? You have to get a chest tube in to take care of the sucking chest wound and tension pneumothorax (collapsed lung), right? Can you get over your own feelings of revulsion at the gore and blood in order to be effective in helping your buddy or family member?
So ultimately, keeping the guy alive until you can get him out will then rely on being able to keep him further alive by definitive interventions. You may be back to an 1860's level of medicine, giving him a bottle of whisky to drink while you do what you can. So, you need to be able to clean, debride and suture wounds. You need to consider antibiotics, because back in the day infection was the major killer of those who initially survived their wounds. Think about use of betadine/sugar poultices and similar, as used by vets on horses.
So, ultimately what is my point? Like all military style doctrine, it has to be assessed and looked at from the perspective of an SHTF situation. TC3 is no different. It is really useful to train as a combat lifesaver or combat medic and to learn to do TC3. But make sure you have assessed the use of it in a non-military SHTF environment and consider the potential absence of definitive care as well as the need for people in your group to step into those gaps with useful skills.
Live Hard, Die Free.
MV
http://maxvelocitytactical.blogspot.com/2013/09/shtf-combat-casualty-considerations.html
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Click here for all your prepping/tactical needs: The Tactical Patriot Store
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Monday, September 16, 2013
Covert Movement
I just read this article by Max Velocity and thought you guys and gals might find it of use also. So here it is from his site:
http://maxvelocitytactical.blogspot.com/2013/08/comment-on-covert-movement.html
Comment on Covert Movement
I'll try and keep this post short. That usually turns out to be harder than you think, as I start getting into the topic. I saw an interesting post on the American Mercenary blog: 'Moving Groups'. I am moved to comment.
So yes, a lot of this depends on the exact scenario you find yourself in. We are not soldiers on a foreign battlefield. It really just depends on how the situation pans out when you end up fighting those 'enemies foreign and domestic'. A few good points have been made out there in the blogosphere lately. Mosby with his 'Underground Tradecraft' post (part 1), and other comments about the likelihood of taking off into the woods in camo and a boonie hat (I'm game....).
It may be SHTF and you are able to wear your best camo.
It may be that you are an active member of the Resistance and you are operating out of camps in the forests and deserts.
It may be that you are a member of the auxiliary, still living in the suburbs and aiding and abetting the active resistance members out there freezing/sweating in the forests.
It may be that we have not yet reached a time of full camo-clad SHTF and you are fighting those pesky 'enemies foreign or domestic' in a more covert way.
In a situation where you are operating as an unconventional fighting force, you will most likely be adopting light infantry tactics. If that is the situation, and you are a classic resistance force out there in the boonies, then you have choices over how you will tactically move those forces around. A classic decision here would involve a platoon sized force, that you perhaps want to move out on an ambush patrol. To do so, you have the choice of moving the whole platoon together, on a route using the best terrain masking available. Or, you break the platoon down into smaller squads or teams and send them via different routes, to rally up at the ORP (objective rally point).
Each approach has advantages and disadvantages (don't they all): the platoon moving together is a larger force, better able to look after itself if discovered and bumped by the enemy, but harder to conceal. On the other hand, the smaller teams are easier to conceal, but using multiple routes may increase the likelihood of discovery, depending on the terrain available to you. You make your own decision based on METT-TC, which in plain language means depending on the circumstances.
In the AmMerc article the approach was discussed, if you are utilizing highly competent personnel, of infiltrating in a covert way as per prior instructions so that individuals would coalesce at a target and conduct an operation, without actually meeting up at something like a rally point beforehand. Well, again it depends on the circumstances but I would be very circumspect of conducting an operation without full orders/briefing plus rehearsals preceding it. It may be that you can then disperse and move to the target by a series of covert individual means, moving either via an ORP or perhaps straight into individual support by fire and assault positions, depending on what you are doing.
Of course, if it is some kind of covert hit onto an enemy target, then it may be able to be conducted more in this manner, with team members either recognizing each other or having recognition signals. It may be that you have an individual or team surveiling the target. Once the conditions are met, they somehow communicate the 'GO' to the kinetic team or individual (sniper perhaps) to move into position, to attack if they are already tin position, or whatever. The target is hit and the sniper team or individual moves out on a predesignated route. At this point, he may have a drop point or perhaps an individual to leave the rifle with (or dump it, clean of forensics, if you can afford to lose it). He then moves, covertly in nondescript civilian clothes, to outside the *** store on *** street, where he meets up with the extraction team/individual in a covert builders van, or whatever. He either knows the guy or the van description, or has some other signal that it is the right van. He gets in and is driven off.
You get the picture. The above description is a way that you could organize, even using a cell system perhaps with guys that did not know each other, to accomplish a mission. It still needs to be planned and coordinated. This would assume a more normal times scenario where people are still out and about in the streets unarmed and where vehicles can move in the streets. Hmmmm....perhaps after full gun confiscation laws are enacted, comes to mind....???
It's not so far fetched; both sides used to get up to stuff like this in Northern Ireland, before everyone hugged and became friends. Let's look at some techniques:
CMV: this is a 'civilian military vehicle'. It describes what is basically a civvy van, all decked out to be no different from a builders truck, delivery van or whatever. These can be used for the covert infil or exfil of troops onto a mission, such as a patrol. Sometimes they were used when the weather was too bad to get a chopper in or out, or when the RAF was watching the game back at their cosy base and could not be bothered to come out and get you. The vans are driven by guys in civilian clothes complete with concealed weapons. In the back, you could have anything up to a full uniformed patrol of twelve guys fully decked out in uniform, or you could have some more covertly attired guys perhaps in earth tone clothing or street clothes.
Because these CMV's were used by security forces rather than resistance fighters, it therefore allowed them freedom to do various things. Pick up and drop off would be done at some covert place. However, one way to do it would be to wait until the CMV was imminent at the pick up point, throw in a quick fake Vehicle Checkpoint on the road, the CMV would roll up and be stopped, and then the patrol would all pile into the van and drive off when no-one was watching. Obviously a tactic for night time use on deserted country roads. A Resistance team could use these vehicles in a similar way to covertly move personnel around, to infil and exfil them from drop-off points where they could continue the mission either in a 'uniformed' or plain clothes manner. Once dropped off, a camo-clad resistance team would then continue to use terrain masking to patrol on foot towards the objective.
In Northern Ireland, the rule of law was very much in evidence. It meant that known 'players' could be stopped at a temporary vehicle checkpoint, searched for weapons, and sent on their way. They did not go about armed for this very reason. They may have been let on their way because to continue to surveil them was a clever plan, or simply because without weapons or direct evidence they could not be arrested. It got complicated. However, I do wonder whether in our increasing police/surveillance state there would even be the freedom of movement accorded to known terrorist players in Northern Ireland? I suspect that in a tyrannical United States, merely being recognized as a suspect would result in a beating and arrest or execution. Its just how we are getting ready to roll right now....
If it's just mass arrests and murders, then that points to a camo-clad resistance based deep in the forests. And, most importantly, hiding families deep in the forests with you, which is going to be the subject of that post on family safety that I need to write. Simply because of reprisals against resistance fighters, you will have to move your families to a hidden and protected location. If that becomes the situation, then all this talk of covert stuff becomes a little irrelevant. It would become camo-clad resistance fighters hiding out in the boonies, supported by an auxiliary who would have to remain 'clean' in order for the Regime to continue to allow them freedom of movement. If movement is stopped due to a lock-down by martial law, then it's just up to the camo-clad guys in the woods to prosecute the campaign.
Back to the Northern Ireland thing: in that situation, the terrorists would not carry weapons except at the specific time that they were going to conduct an attack. That may be different here - you would still likely need to carry a concealed handgun even if you did not pick up your long rifle until just prior to moving into position. Not carrying weapons meant that they could transit on the roads and not get arrested at a traffic stop/search. They would be able to move into the vicinity of the target and be provided the weapon at the last minute, which would then be handed off or dropped as they made their escape.
In Northern Ireland, there was a 'quartermaster' logistics chain that would move weapons and equipment into position. Smuggling it across the border etc. For the next courier in the chain to pick up the item, such as a rifle, it would be left in a cache, often PVC pipes dug into the side of a ditch, and a description would be given. Like a pirate treasure map if you like. Example: "Go to the lay-by two miles north of the *** bridge. Walk north to the broken fence post. Cache in the ditch...etc." It would need a series of recognizable features like a chain to find the cache. The item would be picked up, moved on and eventually be used in an attack.
So, really what is my point? It is to point out a few methods that could be utilized to increase tactical and covert freedom of movement. With a little bit of imagination you can move covertly or you can transport 'uniformed' resistance fighters around the place in a covert manner. If you do so, then you need to have a series of SOPs and contact drills for if the CMV runs into a checkpoint.
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Click here for all your prepping/tactical needs: The Tactical Patriot Store
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http://maxvelocitytactical.blogspot.com/2013/08/comment-on-covert-movement.html
Comment on Covert Movement
I'll try and keep this post short. That usually turns out to be harder than you think, as I start getting into the topic. I saw an interesting post on the American Mercenary blog: 'Moving Groups'. I am moved to comment.
So yes, a lot of this depends on the exact scenario you find yourself in. We are not soldiers on a foreign battlefield. It really just depends on how the situation pans out when you end up fighting those 'enemies foreign and domestic'. A few good points have been made out there in the blogosphere lately. Mosby with his 'Underground Tradecraft' post (part 1), and other comments about the likelihood of taking off into the woods in camo and a boonie hat (I'm game....).
It may be SHTF and you are able to wear your best camo.
It may be that you are an active member of the Resistance and you are operating out of camps in the forests and deserts.
It may be that you are a member of the auxiliary, still living in the suburbs and aiding and abetting the active resistance members out there freezing/sweating in the forests.
It may be that we have not yet reached a time of full camo-clad SHTF and you are fighting those pesky 'enemies foreign or domestic' in a more covert way.
In a situation where you are operating as an unconventional fighting force, you will most likely be adopting light infantry tactics. If that is the situation, and you are a classic resistance force out there in the boonies, then you have choices over how you will tactically move those forces around. A classic decision here would involve a platoon sized force, that you perhaps want to move out on an ambush patrol. To do so, you have the choice of moving the whole platoon together, on a route using the best terrain masking available. Or, you break the platoon down into smaller squads or teams and send them via different routes, to rally up at the ORP (objective rally point).
Each approach has advantages and disadvantages (don't they all): the platoon moving together is a larger force, better able to look after itself if discovered and bumped by the enemy, but harder to conceal. On the other hand, the smaller teams are easier to conceal, but using multiple routes may increase the likelihood of discovery, depending on the terrain available to you. You make your own decision based on METT-TC, which in plain language means depending on the circumstances.
In the AmMerc article the approach was discussed, if you are utilizing highly competent personnel, of infiltrating in a covert way as per prior instructions so that individuals would coalesce at a target and conduct an operation, without actually meeting up at something like a rally point beforehand. Well, again it depends on the circumstances but I would be very circumspect of conducting an operation without full orders/briefing plus rehearsals preceding it. It may be that you can then disperse and move to the target by a series of covert individual means, moving either via an ORP or perhaps straight into individual support by fire and assault positions, depending on what you are doing.
Of course, if it is some kind of covert hit onto an enemy target, then it may be able to be conducted more in this manner, with team members either recognizing each other or having recognition signals. It may be that you have an individual or team surveiling the target. Once the conditions are met, they somehow communicate the 'GO' to the kinetic team or individual (sniper perhaps) to move into position, to attack if they are already tin position, or whatever. The target is hit and the sniper team or individual moves out on a predesignated route. At this point, he may have a drop point or perhaps an individual to leave the rifle with (or dump it, clean of forensics, if you can afford to lose it). He then moves, covertly in nondescript civilian clothes, to outside the *** store on *** street, where he meets up with the extraction team/individual in a covert builders van, or whatever. He either knows the guy or the van description, or has some other signal that it is the right van. He gets in and is driven off.
You get the picture. The above description is a way that you could organize, even using a cell system perhaps with guys that did not know each other, to accomplish a mission. It still needs to be planned and coordinated. This would assume a more normal times scenario where people are still out and about in the streets unarmed and where vehicles can move in the streets. Hmmmm....perhaps after full gun confiscation laws are enacted, comes to mind....???
It's not so far fetched; both sides used to get up to stuff like this in Northern Ireland, before everyone hugged and became friends. Let's look at some techniques:
CMV: this is a 'civilian military vehicle'. It describes what is basically a civvy van, all decked out to be no different from a builders truck, delivery van or whatever. These can be used for the covert infil or exfil of troops onto a mission, such as a patrol. Sometimes they were used when the weather was too bad to get a chopper in or out, or when the RAF was watching the game back at their cosy base and could not be bothered to come out and get you. The vans are driven by guys in civilian clothes complete with concealed weapons. In the back, you could have anything up to a full uniformed patrol of twelve guys fully decked out in uniform, or you could have some more covertly attired guys perhaps in earth tone clothing or street clothes.
Because these CMV's were used by security forces rather than resistance fighters, it therefore allowed them freedom to do various things. Pick up and drop off would be done at some covert place. However, one way to do it would be to wait until the CMV was imminent at the pick up point, throw in a quick fake Vehicle Checkpoint on the road, the CMV would roll up and be stopped, and then the patrol would all pile into the van and drive off when no-one was watching. Obviously a tactic for night time use on deserted country roads. A Resistance team could use these vehicles in a similar way to covertly move personnel around, to infil and exfil them from drop-off points where they could continue the mission either in a 'uniformed' or plain clothes manner. Once dropped off, a camo-clad resistance team would then continue to use terrain masking to patrol on foot towards the objective.
In Northern Ireland, the rule of law was very much in evidence. It meant that known 'players' could be stopped at a temporary vehicle checkpoint, searched for weapons, and sent on their way. They did not go about armed for this very reason. They may have been let on their way because to continue to surveil them was a clever plan, or simply because without weapons or direct evidence they could not be arrested. It got complicated. However, I do wonder whether in our increasing police/surveillance state there would even be the freedom of movement accorded to known terrorist players in Northern Ireland? I suspect that in a tyrannical United States, merely being recognized as a suspect would result in a beating and arrest or execution. Its just how we are getting ready to roll right now....
If it's just mass arrests and murders, then that points to a camo-clad resistance based deep in the forests. And, most importantly, hiding families deep in the forests with you, which is going to be the subject of that post on family safety that I need to write. Simply because of reprisals against resistance fighters, you will have to move your families to a hidden and protected location. If that becomes the situation, then all this talk of covert stuff becomes a little irrelevant. It would become camo-clad resistance fighters hiding out in the boonies, supported by an auxiliary who would have to remain 'clean' in order for the Regime to continue to allow them freedom of movement. If movement is stopped due to a lock-down by martial law, then it's just up to the camo-clad guys in the woods to prosecute the campaign.
Back to the Northern Ireland thing: in that situation, the terrorists would not carry weapons except at the specific time that they were going to conduct an attack. That may be different here - you would still likely need to carry a concealed handgun even if you did not pick up your long rifle until just prior to moving into position. Not carrying weapons meant that they could transit on the roads and not get arrested at a traffic stop/search. They would be able to move into the vicinity of the target and be provided the weapon at the last minute, which would then be handed off or dropped as they made their escape.
In Northern Ireland, there was a 'quartermaster' logistics chain that would move weapons and equipment into position. Smuggling it across the border etc. For the next courier in the chain to pick up the item, such as a rifle, it would be left in a cache, often PVC pipes dug into the side of a ditch, and a description would be given. Like a pirate treasure map if you like. Example: "Go to the lay-by two miles north of the *** bridge. Walk north to the broken fence post. Cache in the ditch...etc." It would need a series of recognizable features like a chain to find the cache. The item would be picked up, moved on and eventually be used in an attack.
So, really what is my point? It is to point out a few methods that could be utilized to increase tactical and covert freedom of movement. With a little bit of imagination you can move covertly or you can transport 'uniformed' resistance fighters around the place in a covert manner. If you do so, then you need to have a series of SOPs and contact drills for if the CMV runs into a checkpoint.
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Friday, September 13, 2013
List of possible extremists
Man, about 30 of the items on this list apply to me!
Originally posted and authored by Michael Snyder at The Truth. All credit goes to him.
Are you a conservative, a libertarian, a Christian or a gun owner? Are you opposed to abortion, globalism, Communism, illegal immigration, the United Nations or the New World Order? Do you believe in conspiracy theories, do you believe that we are living in the “end times” or do you ever visit alternative news websites (such as this one)? If you answered yes to any of those questions, you are a “potential terrorist” according to official U.S. government documents. At one time, the term “terrorist” was used very narrowly. The government applied that label to people like Osama bin Laden and other Islamic jihadists. But now the Obama administration is removing all references to Islam from terror training materials, and instead the term “terrorist” is being applied to large groups of American citizens. And if you are a “terrorist”, that means that you have no rights and the government can treat you just like it treats the terrorists that are being held at Guantanamo Bay. So if you belong to a group of people that is now being referred to as “potential terrorists”, please don’t take it as a joke. The first step to persecuting any group of people is to demonize them. And right now large groups of peaceful, law-abiding citizens are being ruthlessly demonized.
Below is a list of 72 types of Americans that are considered to be “extremists” and “potential terrorists” in official U.S. government documents. To see the original source document for each point, just click on the link. As you can see, this list covers most of the country…
1. Those that talk about “individual liberties”
2. Those that advocate for states’ rights
3. Those that want “to make the world a better place”
4. “The colonists who sought to free themselves from British rule”
5. Those that are interested in “defeating the Communists”
6. Those that believe “that the interests of one’s own nation are separate from the interests of other nations or the common interest of all nations”
7. Anyone that holds a “political ideology that considers the state to be unnecessary, harmful,or undesirable”
8. Anyone that possesses an “intolerance toward other religions”
9. Those that “take action to fight against the exploitation of the environment and/or animals”
10. “Anti-Gay”
11. “Anti-Immigrant”
12. “Anti-Muslim”
13. “The Patriot Movement”
14. “Opposition to equal rights for gays and lesbians”
15. Members of the Family Research Council
16. Members of the American Family Association
17. Those that believe that Mexico, Canada and the United States “are secretly planning to merge into a European Union-like entity that will be known as the ‘North American Union’”
18. Members of the American Border Patrol/American Patrol
19. Members of the Federation for American Immigration Reform
20. Members of the Tennessee Freedom Coalition
21. Members of the Christian Action Network
22. Anyone that is “opposed to the New World Order”
23. Anyone that is engaged in “conspiracy theorizing”
24. Anyone that is opposed to Agenda 21
25. Anyone that is concerned about FEMA camps
26. Anyone that “fears impending gun control or weapons confiscations”
27. The militia movement
28. The sovereign citizen movement
29. Those that “don’t think they should have to pay taxes”
30. Anyone that “complains about bias”
31. Anyone that “believes in government conspiracies to the point of paranoia”
32. Anyone that “is frustrated with mainstream ideologies”
33. Anyone that “visits extremist websites/blogs”
34. Anyone that “establishes website/blog to display extremist views”
35. Anyone that “attends rallies for extremist causes”
36. Anyone that “exhibits extreme religious intolerance”
37. Anyone that “is personally connected with a grievance”
38. Anyone that “suddenly acquires weapons”
39. Anyone that “organizes protests inspired by extremist ideology”
40. “Militia or unorganized militia”
41. “General right-wing extremist”
42. Citizens that have “bumper stickers” that are patriotic or anti-U.N.
43. Those that refer to an “Army of God”
44. Those that are “fiercely nationalistic (as opposed to universal and international in orientation)”
45. Those that are “anti-global”
46. Those that are “suspicious of centralized federal authority”
47. Those that are “reverent of individual liberty”
48. Those that “believe in conspiracy theories”
49. Those that have “a belief that one’s personal and/or national ‘way of life’ is under attack”
50. Those that possess “a belief in the need to be prepared for an attack either by participating in paramilitary preparations and training or survivalism”
51. Those that would “impose strict religious tenets or laws on society (fundamentalists)”
52. Those that would “insert religion into the political sphere”
53. Anyone that would “seek to politicize religion”
54. Those that have “supported political movements for autonomy”
55. Anyone that is “anti-abortion”
56. Anyone that is “anti-Catholic”
57. Anyone that is “anti-nuclear”
58. “Rightwing extremists”
59. “Returning veterans”
60. Those concerned about “illegal immigration”
61. Those that “believe in the right to bear arms”
62. Anyone that is engaged in “ammunition stockpiling”
63. Anyone that exhibits “fear of Communist regimes”
64. “Anti-abortion activists”
65. Those that are against illegal immigration
66. Those that talk about “the New World Order” in a “derogatory” manner
67. Those that have a negative view of the United Nations
68. Those that are opposed “to the collection of federal income taxes”
69. Those that supported former presidential candidates Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin and Bob Barr
70. Those that display the Gadsden Flag (“Don’t Tread On Me”)
71. Those that believe in “end times” prophecies
72. Evangelical Christians
The groups of people in the list above are considered “problems” that need to be dealt with. In some of the documents referenced above, members of the military are specifically warned not to have anything to do with such groups.
We are moving into a very dangerous time in American history. You can now be considered a “potential terrorist” just because of your religious or political beliefs. Free speech is becoming a thing of the past, and we are rapidly becoming an Orwellian society that is the exact opposite of what our founding fathers intended.
Please pray for the United States of America. We definitely need it.
Originally posted and authored by Michael Snyder at The Truth. All credit goes to him.
Are you a conservative, a libertarian, a Christian or a gun owner? Are you opposed to abortion, globalism, Communism, illegal immigration, the United Nations or the New World Order? Do you believe in conspiracy theories, do you believe that we are living in the “end times” or do you ever visit alternative news websites (such as this one)? If you answered yes to any of those questions, you are a “potential terrorist” according to official U.S. government documents. At one time, the term “terrorist” was used very narrowly. The government applied that label to people like Osama bin Laden and other Islamic jihadists. But now the Obama administration is removing all references to Islam from terror training materials, and instead the term “terrorist” is being applied to large groups of American citizens. And if you are a “terrorist”, that means that you have no rights and the government can treat you just like it treats the terrorists that are being held at Guantanamo Bay. So if you belong to a group of people that is now being referred to as “potential terrorists”, please don’t take it as a joke. The first step to persecuting any group of people is to demonize them. And right now large groups of peaceful, law-abiding citizens are being ruthlessly demonized.
Below is a list of 72 types of Americans that are considered to be “extremists” and “potential terrorists” in official U.S. government documents. To see the original source document for each point, just click on the link. As you can see, this list covers most of the country…
1. Those that talk about “individual liberties”
2. Those that advocate for states’ rights
3. Those that want “to make the world a better place”
4. “The colonists who sought to free themselves from British rule”
5. Those that are interested in “defeating the Communists”
6. Those that believe “that the interests of one’s own nation are separate from the interests of other nations or the common interest of all nations”
7. Anyone that holds a “political ideology that considers the state to be unnecessary, harmful,or undesirable”
8. Anyone that possesses an “intolerance toward other religions”
9. Those that “take action to fight against the exploitation of the environment and/or animals”
10. “Anti-Gay”
11. “Anti-Immigrant”
12. “Anti-Muslim”
13. “The Patriot Movement”
14. “Opposition to equal rights for gays and lesbians”
15. Members of the Family Research Council
16. Members of the American Family Association
17. Those that believe that Mexico, Canada and the United States “are secretly planning to merge into a European Union-like entity that will be known as the ‘North American Union’”
18. Members of the American Border Patrol/American Patrol
19. Members of the Federation for American Immigration Reform
20. Members of the Tennessee Freedom Coalition
21. Members of the Christian Action Network
22. Anyone that is “opposed to the New World Order”
23. Anyone that is engaged in “conspiracy theorizing”
24. Anyone that is opposed to Agenda 21
25. Anyone that is concerned about FEMA camps
26. Anyone that “fears impending gun control or weapons confiscations”
27. The militia movement
28. The sovereign citizen movement
29. Those that “don’t think they should have to pay taxes”
30. Anyone that “complains about bias”
31. Anyone that “believes in government conspiracies to the point of paranoia”
32. Anyone that “is frustrated with mainstream ideologies”
33. Anyone that “visits extremist websites/blogs”
34. Anyone that “establishes website/blog to display extremist views”
35. Anyone that “attends rallies for extremist causes”
36. Anyone that “exhibits extreme religious intolerance”
37. Anyone that “is personally connected with a grievance”
38. Anyone that “suddenly acquires weapons”
39. Anyone that “organizes protests inspired by extremist ideology”
40. “Militia or unorganized militia”
41. “General right-wing extremist”
42. Citizens that have “bumper stickers” that are patriotic or anti-U.N.
43. Those that refer to an “Army of God”
44. Those that are “fiercely nationalistic (as opposed to universal and international in orientation)”
45. Those that are “anti-global”
46. Those that are “suspicious of centralized federal authority”
47. Those that are “reverent of individual liberty”
48. Those that “believe in conspiracy theories”
49. Those that have “a belief that one’s personal and/or national ‘way of life’ is under attack”
50. Those that possess “a belief in the need to be prepared for an attack either by participating in paramilitary preparations and training or survivalism”
51. Those that would “impose strict religious tenets or laws on society (fundamentalists)”
52. Those that would “insert religion into the political sphere”
53. Anyone that would “seek to politicize religion”
54. Those that have “supported political movements for autonomy”
55. Anyone that is “anti-abortion”
56. Anyone that is “anti-Catholic”
57. Anyone that is “anti-nuclear”
58. “Rightwing extremists”
59. “Returning veterans”
60. Those concerned about “illegal immigration”
61. Those that “believe in the right to bear arms”
62. Anyone that is engaged in “ammunition stockpiling”
63. Anyone that exhibits “fear of Communist regimes”
64. “Anti-abortion activists”
65. Those that are against illegal immigration
66. Those that talk about “the New World Order” in a “derogatory” manner
67. Those that have a negative view of the United Nations
68. Those that are opposed “to the collection of federal income taxes”
69. Those that supported former presidential candidates Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin and Bob Barr
70. Those that display the Gadsden Flag (“Don’t Tread On Me”)
71. Those that believe in “end times” prophecies
72. Evangelical Christians
The groups of people in the list above are considered “problems” that need to be dealt with. In some of the documents referenced above, members of the military are specifically warned not to have anything to do with such groups.
We are moving into a very dangerous time in American history. You can now be considered a “potential terrorist” just because of your religious or political beliefs. Free speech is becoming a thing of the past, and we are rapidly becoming an Orwellian society that is the exact opposite of what our founding fathers intended.
Please pray for the United States of America. We definitely need it.
Leaderless Resistance
This article is about the concept of Leaderless Resistance; the ideas and comments are not my own, I do agree with much of what is said, I just wanted to get this point of veiw out there so people can make their own informed decision about the direction they want to go.
Author: SMB (US Army, Retired)
Edited for content.
A Brief Overview
Nothing defines the blatant ineptitude and rank incompetence of the radical resistance more starkly than the concept of so-called “leaderless resistance” (hereafter, LR). By its very nature LR amounts to little more than anarchy and, as demonstrated by some of the most recent examples, very rapidly degenerates into simple banditry. Furthermore, one notes for the record that the most vociferous proponents of LR have, in common with those to whom that fantastic idea appeals, exactly zero experience in guerrilla warfare, its theory, or practice.
Simply stated, the concept of LR posits that individuals or small, close-knit groups, acting on their own initiative, performing their own targeting and relying on their own resources, can strike at the government’s infrastructure at will without fear of infiltration. Tactically, LR ranges from individual nuisance acts for the sake of causing a nuisance on one end of the spectrum to small unit terrorism for terrorism’s sake on the other. However, nothing can be said about LR’s potential operational impact because, by definition, through rejection of any superior organizational structure, it can have no operational impact.
Strategically, LR is conspicuously absent from any historical examples of successful insurgency. The idea has been advanced by several writers on the subject that LR is essentially a modern version of the Committees of Correspondence of American Revolution fame. I do not think those writers mean to purposely distort the realities of revolutionary organization in the colonies, but their zeal to justify LR apparently overrode their rational faculties. If those writers had simply paused to consider the word “committee” juxtaposed with “correspondence”, the notion that Committees of Correspondence were autonomous bodies acting independently of one another would have collapsed of its own illogic. In fact, the members of the several colonies’ Committees of Correspondence were appointed by their colonies’ legislative bodies, everyone knew who they were, and they coordinated their activities between each other or with the Continental Congress through a chain of command. Hardly an example of leaderless resistance.
There are however several striking examples, discussed below, that demonstrate why LR is fundamentally flawed as a resistance strategy.
The Order
“The Order” is frequently cited as an example (in its early stages, before it began recruiting) of the principle of LR. Given that most members of The Order are either dead or in federal prisons it is also an example of many of the fundamental flaws in the concept.
The Order began as an eight man cell dedicated to creating an Aryan homeland in the Pacific Northwest. How eight men expected to accomplish that objective has never been clearly explained, but following their logic it seems that the organizers of The Order believed that direct action against the government for the purpose of financing other organizations in the racialist resistance would inspire others to imitate their example thus creating an avalanche effect as other self creating “cells” rallied to the cause. Predictably, that “strategy” failed miserably.
Had the organizers of The Order expended half the effort in researching failed insurgencies as they did planning armored car and bank heists they would have found that their strategy (if indeed they ever had one beyond “do things”) had already been tried by no less than Che Guevara. The name of that “strategy” is called the Loco (i.e., focus). The theory is this: Plunk a small band of guerrillas down in an ostensibly “oppressed” countryside, begin maiming, murdering and robbing the oppressors, and the peasants will rise up and flock in proletarian support to the Loco to sweep the bourgeoisie from the political landscape. However, the “oppressed” in whose name Che fought snitched off his band to the oppressors, and Che and his Bolivian Loco bandits were hunted down like animals and killed. End of insurgency.
Aside from robbing banks and armored cars and sharing the loot with phone booth emperors who were vying for the same mailing list, The Order did manage to kill a Jew in Denver, blow up a synagogue in Boise, Idaho, and murder one of their own recruits before they were finally hunted down, killed or arrested.
The Order therefore illustrates Reason #1 LR does not work. “Grass roots” resistance is doomed to failure; there are no examples of it having ever succeeded. Frustrated by any appreciable effect of propaganda on a population so dim it could offer not even neutrality, and impatient with time proven organizational principles, they simply decided to “kick things off” themselves armed with nothing but a single idea that was immediately discredited because (1) the population did not care about the idea, so (2) they possessed no means of enlisting assistance or acceptance for their crime spree. The lesson learned about The Order’s example is that rebelliousness has no place in a resistance.
Eric Rudolph
Personally, my reaction to the bombing of abortion clinics and gay bars is, “Where’s the crime?” In many respects Rudolph exemplifies LR at the individual level. He didn’t make threats or discuss his plans with anybody, he didn’t ask permission, he simply started punctuating his deeply held beliefs with explosions.
If Rudolph has one thing going for him (aside from being the “1997 – 1999 Hide and Seek Champion of the World”) it’s that he has a steep learning curve. Note the successive “product improvements” of his devices. He obviously paid close attention to the official Bomb Damage Assessments of his handiwork, and progressively applied those lessons learned to his subsequent projects, not only mechanically (although he had not yet come to appreciate that nails are crap for shrapnel — ball bearings are much better, having sounder ballistics) but also tactically.
For example, constructive development of Rudolph’s devices progresses to smaller timers, smaller batteries, dynamite instead of pipe bombs and thicker pressure plates. By the time of the Atlanta gay bar and abortion clinic bombings his devices fit very nicely into a book bag, and at the lesbian bar he left behind an 80 pound time delay “present” intended for enthusiastic crime scene investigators. A year later, a Birmingham, Alabama, cop who was guarding an abortion clinic between stints as a guard at a gay bar, poked at a flower pot with his baton causing Rudolph to allegedly command detonate his device (or lose it to the bomb squad). Significantly, the device was directional, the majority of the blast was focused on the front door. Eric’s obvious goal was to abort the abortionist when he arrived, but the cop’s ill considered curiosity preempted the objective of the attack. Nevertheless, Rudolph had progressed from crude pipe bombs to command detonated directional devices in four operations. Not bad.
Rudolph’s problem was that, while his devices advanced both mechanically and in lethality, their basic construction, and therefore their “signature,” remained the same. Because he was driving his own vehicle to and from the target area the feds quickly obtained a description of it and the plate number, and by the time he had driven back in Murphy, North Carolina, the FBI was scouring the city for him. Informed by friends that he was being sought by the FBI as a “material witness” to the Birmingham bombing, he did the next logical thing. He went to Burger King, bought some chow, then disappeared into the mountains.
What is remarkable about Rudolph, as an individual example of LR, is his focus, his dedication, his coolness, his self reliance, and his aggressiveness — and that he is still alive. In fact, by the spring of 1999, the FBI had almost completely retreated out of the mountains and into their compound in Andrews, North Carolina, because, in the words of SSA Terry Turchie, Rudolph manhunt director, “We think he is hunting us.”
But those very qualities that make young Eric so remarkable are precisely those qualities that make him not only the exception to the rule, but also a positive example of why LR on an individual level is again doomed to failure except in the rarest of circumstances. Eric possesses what precious few other individuals who might contemplate the “Rudolph model” of LR possess — the semblance of an infrastructure. Young Eric’s infrastructure is composed entirely of friends of belief in kind, or tacit sympathy for the act even if not for his beliefs. However, that necessarily delimited his operational radius. And even though Rudolph enjoys the active neutrality of the population in his area of operations, his limited circle of friends lacked any infrastructure that would have enabled him wider range in his holy mission.
What Rudolph’s circle of friends were incapable of providing was operational support. He procured his own explosives and materiel. He built his own bombs. He performed his own targeting. He emplaced his own devices. He provided his own transportation. His circle of friends were useless operationally, and the best they could do for him locally when he became a fugitive was turn a blind eye when he raided their chicken coops or delay reporting his presence when he broke into their houses to raid the cupboard.
Eric Rudolph therefore illustrates Reason #2 LR does not work. It has no formal infrastructure, thus its support is at best haphazard and is always uncoordinated. Consequently, such notional “support” is bound to fall apart at the seams at some point. Even though there is not yet any evidence that his network of friends is beginning to crumble, it is painfully obvious that they are incapable of supporting or sustaining any further operations by Eric. The lesson learned about Eric Rudolph’s example is that independence of action means isolation from effective support, hence an inability to sustain operations in the face of determined opposition reaction.
Further Considerations
The above examples of group and individual LR illustrate only a very small number of associated problems. For example, as mentioned in the Eric Rudolph example, the lack of a formal organizational infrastructure means that LR “cells” must provide for themselves everything appertaining their operational requirements. This fact necessarily places the LR “cell” in the unenviable position of being personally involved in all the activities, such as logistics (including financing), communications, targeting and planning, needed to execute their operations. Because of their personal involvement they dramatically raise not only their own “profile,” but also that of the operation. Those named activities in a properly constituted resistance organization would be delegated to cells (unknown to the “direct action” operatives) specifically tasked to perform those functions thus virtually eliminating the operation’s profile — until bodies need to be dug out of the rubble. Traditional procedures also so diffuse the opposition’s post action investigation that it takes months or years, instead of days in the case of an LR “plan,” to unravel all the pre-mission details and thereby identify and begin hunting the operatives.
Furthermore, LR as a “strategy,” if we are to believe what its proponents expect us to believe about it, has specific appeal only to the lowest (or most psychotic) common denominator within any given organization. The fact that the notion of LR is being propagated should give pause to serious minded individuals because those organizations that promote LR almost universally make their appeals for membership to the “proletariat,” as demonstrated by the crudeness of their rhetoric and public manifestations. Nevertheless, the idea that independently conceived and executed “grassroots” action solely for the sake of action can have any appreciable impact as a resistance methodology to the planned destruction of our society is nonsense. And if the history of LR is any indicator it plays right into our enemy’s hand.
Consider the Progressive distorted prosecutive “legal” strategy known as vicarious liability. In Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence vicarious liability is the “indirect or imputed legal responsibility for the acts of another… as between an employer and employee… or a principle for torts and contracts of an agent.” (Black’s 6th ed.) In a nut shell, the Progressive-contorted version of vicarious liability contends that “hate speech” creates a “climate of hate” that propels small groups or individuals to commit “hate crimes” and that, therefore, any organization that espouses Progressive-defined “hate” is “responsible” for the actions of individuals or groups, employees or not, who commit the “crime.”
Never mind that the Progressive-version of vicarious liability perfectly inverts the traditions of Anglo-Saxon legal precedent which places responsibility for crime upon the individual criminal and which reserves vicarious liability to employers whose agents’ (i.e., responsible to the employer) acts result in willful harm to others. In the example of the justifiable murder of the abortionist Sleppian, a web site that listed the names, addresses and photographs of abortionists was ordered to shut down even though there was no proof of any connection between the owners of the web site and the righteous man who dwindled our Progressive infestation by one. The web site had “created a climate of hate,” you see.
The Progressive-twisted version of vicarious liability is reserved solely for Christian men and their organizations. Why? Eric Rudolph serves as another example. Hundreds of FBI agents [has anybody else noticed that the FBI refers to its personnel using the same term intelligence officers understand as “street shit?”] are hunting him, and a million dollar reward has been offered for him, not because he allegedly planted a couple of bombs, but because he committed a politically incorrect crime; he tried to blow up abortionists and gays. His motive is the reason he is being hunted.
In Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence motive is merely a mitigating factor. When Progressives are permitted to practice law — or more horrifying, make law — in Anglo-Saxon nations, the law rapidly degenerates into quibbling. In the case of vicarious liability, the extrinsic motive becomes the real crime. In other words, what you were thinking when you committed the crime is more important than what you did, and what you were thinking is the fault of the organization – whether you are a member or not — that espouses what you believe. Ergo, according to Progressive lawyers, the organization is vicariously liable for your crime and can be sued. The most recent Southern Poverty Law Center law suit against the Aryan Nations is only the most recent in a pattern of similar suits.
Why the long winded speech about vicarious liability? Because the organizations that promote LR are being sued in rotation by Progressives when proletarian groups or individuals (employees, members, or not) take them at their word and begin practicing it. Significantly, organizations that demand at least a modicum of discipline from their members and which prefer to recruit from the bourgeoisie, have so far been spared the embarrassment of “loose cannons” in their ranks. Think about it.
How “It” Is Really Done
What often amazes me is the simple-mindedness of those who propose to wage one or the other of many forms of armed resistance against the government. Because the sheer scale of the proposition cannot be grasped by minds conditioned to think in terms of snappy political slogans and time frames rarely exceeding seven minutes between commercial breaks, I often find that when the scale is explained to them their response is blank incomprehension. This inability to grasp the complexity and magnitude of the proposition is but one reason why such ideas as Leaderless Resistance gain currency.
Among all the outpourings about LR, the only comprehensible rationale given for promoting anarcho-resistance is the fear of opposition infiltration and penetration of properly constituted organizations. That rationale is the very reason LR should be dismissed out of hand as the drivel of flagrant neophytes who possess just enough comic book knowledge about armed resistance to be dangerously stupid (emphasis added –JM); and who are irresponsible enough to share their “knowledge” with others.
The reason advocates of LR advance the fear of infiltration as their only comprehensible rationale for promoting anarcho-resistance is because, like every other band of proletarian dissidents, they believe that resistance begins with armed groups. In other words, they organize everything backwards, from the bottom up. This does, as they fear, leave them vulnerable to penetration when they finally discover that they cannot support or sustain their own operations and of necessity need to recruit new members or organize some semblance of a support apparatus.
Armed resistance is only one subset of what is properly defined as Political Warfare. Policy making in Political Warfare encompasses ideological warfare, organizational warfare, psychological warfare (wherein falls armed resistance), intelligence warfare, and mass warfare. Within the subset of armed resistance we find planned political violence (assassination, kidnapping, bombing), which is employed as a tactic of both disruptive and coercive terrorism. The disruptive nature of terrorism is the repression of and reprisals against the general population that it provokes from government. As a coercive measure terrorism enforces obedience from noncombatants or punctuates the demands of the terrorists.
Note the words “policy” and “planned.” That means there must be a policy making body who turn their deliberated decisions over to another organizational element which plans the implementation of those policies, in turn delegating responsibility for executing the plan to further subordinate elements. This requires not only a centralized command element that makes decisions, but also a staff who turn those decisions into mission taskings to the staffs of subordinate resistance activities. In descending order of manpower and complexity of organization those activities are, (1) the underground, (2) the auxiliary, and (3) the guerrillas.
Mission tasking, broadly speaking, covers five basic categories; (1) action, (2) security, (3) cover and logistics, (4) surveillance and intelligence, and (5) communications. Each category is serviced by in independent element. Each element’s requirements are then forwarded to management who assemble the information into a mission planning guide and requirements list. Once this information is assembled, planning follows an ordered sequence.
The Intelligence Cycle sets into motion collection operations in response to the informational needs expressed in the requirements list. Targeting is highly discriminatory, begins very early in the planning process, and includes consideration of both primary and sub-targets. Wargaming, which considers the action to be taken and the probability of success of several courses of action. Protection, which prevents discovery, prevention of arrest, and provision for building and maintaining cover. Operational Support falls into five broad categories; (1) communications, (2) accommodations, (3) transportation, (4) technological support, and (5) supply. Planning of the final phase, Action, does not begin until all other planning requirements have been met.
LR objections to the foregoing model are, as already stated, the fear of infiltration and betrayal by government informants or penetration of the organization by government spies. The reason I mentioned my disdain for the tendency among the various proletarian organizations to organize armed cells first (i.e., do the whole thing backward) earlier in this essay is because organizing backward creates the very condition that leaves their groups open to infiltration and betrayal — their eventual necessity to organize some form of support. To do this they need to recruit from outside their immediate circle.
Tim McVeigh & Co. is an excellent example. When they realized they could not pull off their operation on their own they began enlisting support from people and organizations who really had no business knowing what they were up to. Within hours of the OKC bombing the FBI was all over them like flies on dung (and there is considerable evidence that the FBI began manipulating the operation about midway through their “planning”).
The point I am making is this: In a properly organized resistance one of the first things constituted is an overarching counterintelligence body that permeates the very fabric of the organization at all levels. Coincident with counterintelligence is the compartmentalization of the resistance organization and planning — something almost totally lacking in LR “cells.”
Furthermore, for those among you who think that resistance warfare is some type of free-booting tryst where “rugged individuals” can “get some back” from their oppressors, I suggest you stay home with the women. The authoritarianism and regulation of the standing military pales in comparison to the rigid authoritarianism, regulation and submission to duty found in resistance organizations.
Although some small measure of disjointed disruption may be achieved by LR, and although LR may exert some paltry degree of temporary coercion, its lack of far ranging planning, organizational discipline, coordination with other elements, or a support net designed to sustain operations will find them littering the streets with their corpses.
If there is a single good thing to be said about LR, it is that while LR “cells” are distracting the Enemy, the grown-ups can go about their more serious business.
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Author: SMB (US Army, Retired)
Edited for content.
A Brief Overview
Nothing defines the blatant ineptitude and rank incompetence of the radical resistance more starkly than the concept of so-called “leaderless resistance” (hereafter, LR). By its very nature LR amounts to little more than anarchy and, as demonstrated by some of the most recent examples, very rapidly degenerates into simple banditry. Furthermore, one notes for the record that the most vociferous proponents of LR have, in common with those to whom that fantastic idea appeals, exactly zero experience in guerrilla warfare, its theory, or practice.
Simply stated, the concept of LR posits that individuals or small, close-knit groups, acting on their own initiative, performing their own targeting and relying on their own resources, can strike at the government’s infrastructure at will without fear of infiltration. Tactically, LR ranges from individual nuisance acts for the sake of causing a nuisance on one end of the spectrum to small unit terrorism for terrorism’s sake on the other. However, nothing can be said about LR’s potential operational impact because, by definition, through rejection of any superior organizational structure, it can have no operational impact.
Strategically, LR is conspicuously absent from any historical examples of successful insurgency. The idea has been advanced by several writers on the subject that LR is essentially a modern version of the Committees of Correspondence of American Revolution fame. I do not think those writers mean to purposely distort the realities of revolutionary organization in the colonies, but their zeal to justify LR apparently overrode their rational faculties. If those writers had simply paused to consider the word “committee” juxtaposed with “correspondence”, the notion that Committees of Correspondence were autonomous bodies acting independently of one another would have collapsed of its own illogic. In fact, the members of the several colonies’ Committees of Correspondence were appointed by their colonies’ legislative bodies, everyone knew who they were, and they coordinated their activities between each other or with the Continental Congress through a chain of command. Hardly an example of leaderless resistance.
There are however several striking examples, discussed below, that demonstrate why LR is fundamentally flawed as a resistance strategy.
The Order
“The Order” is frequently cited as an example (in its early stages, before it began recruiting) of the principle of LR. Given that most members of The Order are either dead or in federal prisons it is also an example of many of the fundamental flaws in the concept.
The Order began as an eight man cell dedicated to creating an Aryan homeland in the Pacific Northwest. How eight men expected to accomplish that objective has never been clearly explained, but following their logic it seems that the organizers of The Order believed that direct action against the government for the purpose of financing other organizations in the racialist resistance would inspire others to imitate their example thus creating an avalanche effect as other self creating “cells” rallied to the cause. Predictably, that “strategy” failed miserably.
Had the organizers of The Order expended half the effort in researching failed insurgencies as they did planning armored car and bank heists they would have found that their strategy (if indeed they ever had one beyond “do things”) had already been tried by no less than Che Guevara. The name of that “strategy” is called the Loco (i.e., focus). The theory is this: Plunk a small band of guerrillas down in an ostensibly “oppressed” countryside, begin maiming, murdering and robbing the oppressors, and the peasants will rise up and flock in proletarian support to the Loco to sweep the bourgeoisie from the political landscape. However, the “oppressed” in whose name Che fought snitched off his band to the oppressors, and Che and his Bolivian Loco bandits were hunted down like animals and killed. End of insurgency.
Aside from robbing banks and armored cars and sharing the loot with phone booth emperors who were vying for the same mailing list, The Order did manage to kill a Jew in Denver, blow up a synagogue in Boise, Idaho, and murder one of their own recruits before they were finally hunted down, killed or arrested.
The Order therefore illustrates Reason #1 LR does not work. “Grass roots” resistance is doomed to failure; there are no examples of it having ever succeeded. Frustrated by any appreciable effect of propaganda on a population so dim it could offer not even neutrality, and impatient with time proven organizational principles, they simply decided to “kick things off” themselves armed with nothing but a single idea that was immediately discredited because (1) the population did not care about the idea, so (2) they possessed no means of enlisting assistance or acceptance for their crime spree. The lesson learned about The Order’s example is that rebelliousness has no place in a resistance.
Eric Rudolph
Personally, my reaction to the bombing of abortion clinics and gay bars is, “Where’s the crime?” In many respects Rudolph exemplifies LR at the individual level. He didn’t make threats or discuss his plans with anybody, he didn’t ask permission, he simply started punctuating his deeply held beliefs with explosions.
If Rudolph has one thing going for him (aside from being the “1997 – 1999 Hide and Seek Champion of the World”) it’s that he has a steep learning curve. Note the successive “product improvements” of his devices. He obviously paid close attention to the official Bomb Damage Assessments of his handiwork, and progressively applied those lessons learned to his subsequent projects, not only mechanically (although he had not yet come to appreciate that nails are crap for shrapnel — ball bearings are much better, having sounder ballistics) but also tactically.
For example, constructive development of Rudolph’s devices progresses to smaller timers, smaller batteries, dynamite instead of pipe bombs and thicker pressure plates. By the time of the Atlanta gay bar and abortion clinic bombings his devices fit very nicely into a book bag, and at the lesbian bar he left behind an 80 pound time delay “present” intended for enthusiastic crime scene investigators. A year later, a Birmingham, Alabama, cop who was guarding an abortion clinic between stints as a guard at a gay bar, poked at a flower pot with his baton causing Rudolph to allegedly command detonate his device (or lose it to the bomb squad). Significantly, the device was directional, the majority of the blast was focused on the front door. Eric’s obvious goal was to abort the abortionist when he arrived, but the cop’s ill considered curiosity preempted the objective of the attack. Nevertheless, Rudolph had progressed from crude pipe bombs to command detonated directional devices in four operations. Not bad.
Rudolph’s problem was that, while his devices advanced both mechanically and in lethality, their basic construction, and therefore their “signature,” remained the same. Because he was driving his own vehicle to and from the target area the feds quickly obtained a description of it and the plate number, and by the time he had driven back in Murphy, North Carolina, the FBI was scouring the city for him. Informed by friends that he was being sought by the FBI as a “material witness” to the Birmingham bombing, he did the next logical thing. He went to Burger King, bought some chow, then disappeared into the mountains.
What is remarkable about Rudolph, as an individual example of LR, is his focus, his dedication, his coolness, his self reliance, and his aggressiveness — and that he is still alive. In fact, by the spring of 1999, the FBI had almost completely retreated out of the mountains and into their compound in Andrews, North Carolina, because, in the words of SSA Terry Turchie, Rudolph manhunt director, “We think he is hunting us.”
But those very qualities that make young Eric so remarkable are precisely those qualities that make him not only the exception to the rule, but also a positive example of why LR on an individual level is again doomed to failure except in the rarest of circumstances. Eric possesses what precious few other individuals who might contemplate the “Rudolph model” of LR possess — the semblance of an infrastructure. Young Eric’s infrastructure is composed entirely of friends of belief in kind, or tacit sympathy for the act even if not for his beliefs. However, that necessarily delimited his operational radius. And even though Rudolph enjoys the active neutrality of the population in his area of operations, his limited circle of friends lacked any infrastructure that would have enabled him wider range in his holy mission.
What Rudolph’s circle of friends were incapable of providing was operational support. He procured his own explosives and materiel. He built his own bombs. He performed his own targeting. He emplaced his own devices. He provided his own transportation. His circle of friends were useless operationally, and the best they could do for him locally when he became a fugitive was turn a blind eye when he raided their chicken coops or delay reporting his presence when he broke into their houses to raid the cupboard.
Eric Rudolph therefore illustrates Reason #2 LR does not work. It has no formal infrastructure, thus its support is at best haphazard and is always uncoordinated. Consequently, such notional “support” is bound to fall apart at the seams at some point. Even though there is not yet any evidence that his network of friends is beginning to crumble, it is painfully obvious that they are incapable of supporting or sustaining any further operations by Eric. The lesson learned about Eric Rudolph’s example is that independence of action means isolation from effective support, hence an inability to sustain operations in the face of determined opposition reaction.
Further Considerations
The above examples of group and individual LR illustrate only a very small number of associated problems. For example, as mentioned in the Eric Rudolph example, the lack of a formal organizational infrastructure means that LR “cells” must provide for themselves everything appertaining their operational requirements. This fact necessarily places the LR “cell” in the unenviable position of being personally involved in all the activities, such as logistics (including financing), communications, targeting and planning, needed to execute their operations. Because of their personal involvement they dramatically raise not only their own “profile,” but also that of the operation. Those named activities in a properly constituted resistance organization would be delegated to cells (unknown to the “direct action” operatives) specifically tasked to perform those functions thus virtually eliminating the operation’s profile — until bodies need to be dug out of the rubble. Traditional procedures also so diffuse the opposition’s post action investigation that it takes months or years, instead of days in the case of an LR “plan,” to unravel all the pre-mission details and thereby identify and begin hunting the operatives.
Furthermore, LR as a “strategy,” if we are to believe what its proponents expect us to believe about it, has specific appeal only to the lowest (or most psychotic) common denominator within any given organization. The fact that the notion of LR is being propagated should give pause to serious minded individuals because those organizations that promote LR almost universally make their appeals for membership to the “proletariat,” as demonstrated by the crudeness of their rhetoric and public manifestations. Nevertheless, the idea that independently conceived and executed “grassroots” action solely for the sake of action can have any appreciable impact as a resistance methodology to the planned destruction of our society is nonsense. And if the history of LR is any indicator it plays right into our enemy’s hand.
Consider the Progressive distorted prosecutive “legal” strategy known as vicarious liability. In Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence vicarious liability is the “indirect or imputed legal responsibility for the acts of another… as between an employer and employee… or a principle for torts and contracts of an agent.” (Black’s 6th ed.) In a nut shell, the Progressive-contorted version of vicarious liability contends that “hate speech” creates a “climate of hate” that propels small groups or individuals to commit “hate crimes” and that, therefore, any organization that espouses Progressive-defined “hate” is “responsible” for the actions of individuals or groups, employees or not, who commit the “crime.”
Never mind that the Progressive-version of vicarious liability perfectly inverts the traditions of Anglo-Saxon legal precedent which places responsibility for crime upon the individual criminal and which reserves vicarious liability to employers whose agents’ (i.e., responsible to the employer) acts result in willful harm to others. In the example of the justifiable murder of the abortionist Sleppian, a web site that listed the names, addresses and photographs of abortionists was ordered to shut down even though there was no proof of any connection between the owners of the web site and the righteous man who dwindled our Progressive infestation by one. The web site had “created a climate of hate,” you see.
The Progressive-twisted version of vicarious liability is reserved solely for Christian men and their organizations. Why? Eric Rudolph serves as another example. Hundreds of FBI agents [has anybody else noticed that the FBI refers to its personnel using the same term intelligence officers understand as “street shit?”] are hunting him, and a million dollar reward has been offered for him, not because he allegedly planted a couple of bombs, but because he committed a politically incorrect crime; he tried to blow up abortionists and gays. His motive is the reason he is being hunted.
In Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence motive is merely a mitigating factor. When Progressives are permitted to practice law — or more horrifying, make law — in Anglo-Saxon nations, the law rapidly degenerates into quibbling. In the case of vicarious liability, the extrinsic motive becomes the real crime. In other words, what you were thinking when you committed the crime is more important than what you did, and what you were thinking is the fault of the organization – whether you are a member or not — that espouses what you believe. Ergo, according to Progressive lawyers, the organization is vicariously liable for your crime and can be sued. The most recent Southern Poverty Law Center law suit against the Aryan Nations is only the most recent in a pattern of similar suits.
Why the long winded speech about vicarious liability? Because the organizations that promote LR are being sued in rotation by Progressives when proletarian groups or individuals (employees, members, or not) take them at their word and begin practicing it. Significantly, organizations that demand at least a modicum of discipline from their members and which prefer to recruit from the bourgeoisie, have so far been spared the embarrassment of “loose cannons” in their ranks. Think about it.
How “It” Is Really Done
What often amazes me is the simple-mindedness of those who propose to wage one or the other of many forms of armed resistance against the government. Because the sheer scale of the proposition cannot be grasped by minds conditioned to think in terms of snappy political slogans and time frames rarely exceeding seven minutes between commercial breaks, I often find that when the scale is explained to them their response is blank incomprehension. This inability to grasp the complexity and magnitude of the proposition is but one reason why such ideas as Leaderless Resistance gain currency.
Among all the outpourings about LR, the only comprehensible rationale given for promoting anarcho-resistance is the fear of opposition infiltration and penetration of properly constituted organizations. That rationale is the very reason LR should be dismissed out of hand as the drivel of flagrant neophytes who possess just enough comic book knowledge about armed resistance to be dangerously stupid (emphasis added –JM); and who are irresponsible enough to share their “knowledge” with others.
The reason advocates of LR advance the fear of infiltration as their only comprehensible rationale for promoting anarcho-resistance is because, like every other band of proletarian dissidents, they believe that resistance begins with armed groups. In other words, they organize everything backwards, from the bottom up. This does, as they fear, leave them vulnerable to penetration when they finally discover that they cannot support or sustain their own operations and of necessity need to recruit new members or organize some semblance of a support apparatus.
Armed resistance is only one subset of what is properly defined as Political Warfare. Policy making in Political Warfare encompasses ideological warfare, organizational warfare, psychological warfare (wherein falls armed resistance), intelligence warfare, and mass warfare. Within the subset of armed resistance we find planned political violence (assassination, kidnapping, bombing), which is employed as a tactic of both disruptive and coercive terrorism. The disruptive nature of terrorism is the repression of and reprisals against the general population that it provokes from government. As a coercive measure terrorism enforces obedience from noncombatants or punctuates the demands of the terrorists.
Note the words “policy” and “planned.” That means there must be a policy making body who turn their deliberated decisions over to another organizational element which plans the implementation of those policies, in turn delegating responsibility for executing the plan to further subordinate elements. This requires not only a centralized command element that makes decisions, but also a staff who turn those decisions into mission taskings to the staffs of subordinate resistance activities. In descending order of manpower and complexity of organization those activities are, (1) the underground, (2) the auxiliary, and (3) the guerrillas.
Mission tasking, broadly speaking, covers five basic categories; (1) action, (2) security, (3) cover and logistics, (4) surveillance and intelligence, and (5) communications. Each category is serviced by in independent element. Each element’s requirements are then forwarded to management who assemble the information into a mission planning guide and requirements list. Once this information is assembled, planning follows an ordered sequence.
The Intelligence Cycle sets into motion collection operations in response to the informational needs expressed in the requirements list. Targeting is highly discriminatory, begins very early in the planning process, and includes consideration of both primary and sub-targets. Wargaming, which considers the action to be taken and the probability of success of several courses of action. Protection, which prevents discovery, prevention of arrest, and provision for building and maintaining cover. Operational Support falls into five broad categories; (1) communications, (2) accommodations, (3) transportation, (4) technological support, and (5) supply. Planning of the final phase, Action, does not begin until all other planning requirements have been met.
LR objections to the foregoing model are, as already stated, the fear of infiltration and betrayal by government informants or penetration of the organization by government spies. The reason I mentioned my disdain for the tendency among the various proletarian organizations to organize armed cells first (i.e., do the whole thing backward) earlier in this essay is because organizing backward creates the very condition that leaves their groups open to infiltration and betrayal — their eventual necessity to organize some form of support. To do this they need to recruit from outside their immediate circle.
Tim McVeigh & Co. is an excellent example. When they realized they could not pull off their operation on their own they began enlisting support from people and organizations who really had no business knowing what they were up to. Within hours of the OKC bombing the FBI was all over them like flies on dung (and there is considerable evidence that the FBI began manipulating the operation about midway through their “planning”).
The point I am making is this: In a properly organized resistance one of the first things constituted is an overarching counterintelligence body that permeates the very fabric of the organization at all levels. Coincident with counterintelligence is the compartmentalization of the resistance organization and planning — something almost totally lacking in LR “cells.”
Furthermore, for those among you who think that resistance warfare is some type of free-booting tryst where “rugged individuals” can “get some back” from their oppressors, I suggest you stay home with the women. The authoritarianism and regulation of the standing military pales in comparison to the rigid authoritarianism, regulation and submission to duty found in resistance organizations.
Although some small measure of disjointed disruption may be achieved by LR, and although LR may exert some paltry degree of temporary coercion, its lack of far ranging planning, organizational discipline, coordination with other elements, or a support net designed to sustain operations will find them littering the streets with their corpses.
If there is a single good thing to be said about LR, it is that while LR “cells” are distracting the Enemy, the grown-ups can go about their more serious business.
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Click here for all your prepping/tactical needs: The Tactical Patriot Store
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Thursday, September 12, 2013
Resistance Tactics
Raids, ambushes, sniper attacks (a form of ambush, really), and sabotage, ARE the fundamental tactics of guerrilla/insurgent/resistance combat, but a sound grasp of the fundamental realities of these methods, as well as a solid grasp of strategic target selection and analysis is critical to prevent a waste of limited material and manpower resources on tactical level targets of insignificant worth. The level of potential effectiveness of offensive operations against a regime that can be sustained over time depends largely on the guerrilla base camp support and auxiliary support available to the resistance (it is hard after all, to sustain on-going combat operations, when your fighting men haven’t eaten in two weeks, have been barefoot all winter, due to a lack of footwear, and have nowhere to hide long enough to get some sleep after weeks of continuous combat. The guerrilla base MUST be located in order to maximize isolation, as well as difficulty of approach by regime forces thus precluding the use of a suburban neighborhood as an effective guerrilla base). The base camp area must be inherently defensible, and tenaciously defended by well-trained, highly-motivated forces. This provides the resistance’s fighting elements with a safe haven to operate from, ensuring they have the time and ability to properly plan offensive operations (this does NOT mean that irregular forces will be conducting their offensive operations in remote, rural areas, if that is not where the enemy is concentrating his forces).
Guerrilla element leaders must consider the nature of the terrain in their operational area (OAKOC), as well as the level of training and tactical expertise of their forces, when considering suitable targets for offensive operations (sending a bunch of 40-somethings with no combat experience and little realistic, tactical training, up against an AFV-equipped security forces element, with close-air support and reinforcements only a radio call and helicopter ride away would be a ridiculous waste of assets, regardless of their marksmanship abilities and/or motivation levels).
The current doctrinal method of target analysis/selection is the CARVER matrix. An analysis of any potential target, using this matrix will provide a planning organization with a method to categorize the cost-benefit value of potential regime targets in a hierarchical manner, allowing the greatest emphasis to be placed on the targets that offer the greatest political value to the resistance’s efforts (i.e. hitting as fuel depot that re-supplies occupation force Strykers or BMPs will be of much greater value to the resistance than ambushing a squad-sized element of conscripted infantrymen. In turn however, a sniper attack that assassinates key members of a special operations element within the regime security forces may have greater value than a raid on a vehicle park that results in destruction of a half-dozen armored vehicles).
Criticality. A potential target can be considered critical when its destruction or severe damage will create a SIGNIFICANT negative impact on the enemy’s ability to continue projecting military force in the operational area. Criticality is dependent on several key factors:
1.How rapidly/soon will the destruction/damage of this target impact and affect enemy operations in the operational area? Will it happen immediately (i.e. the destruction of his armored vehicles may preclude continued mounted patrolling the next day, especially in areas that require lengthy, time-consuming travel, such as in much of the western U.S.A.) or will there be a noticeable delay (destruction of a fuel storage depot might negatively impact the enemy’s ability to continue operations, but not until the fuel supplies maintained at the unit level are expended…and they may be able to replace the fuel depot before that happens)?
2.What percentage of enemy operations will be curtailed by target damage or destruction? What level of damage must be incurred in order to ensure a given percentage of curtailment (if I destroy ALL of their vehicles, will it curtail operations 100%, or will they continue with foot-mobile operations? If I destroy x percentage of rotary-wing assets, will it create a y percentage reduction in their operating ability)?
3.Do substitutes for the damaged/destroyed material/manpower assets exist within the enemy’s logistics trail? How long will it take for those to be put into place?
4.How many targets exist, and what is their position/value within the greater scheme of the enemy’s order of battle?
Accessibility. The target, in order to realistically be the subject of a planned attack, must be accessible. While it has been accurately stated that NO target is completely inaccessible, some high-value targets must, after being weighed on an objective cost-benefit basis, be considered as practically inaccessible, due to the cost involved with actually damaging/destroying them, in terms of resistance force manpower/material assets. A target can be considered accessible to resistance attack when it is possible for the maneuver element to physically infiltrate the target’s immediate area, or the target can be successfully engaged via direct or indirect fire weapons (the current focus on the development of open-source UAV technology by some elements within the liberty movement will greatly expand the accessibility of future targets for the resistance, due to the inherent “guided missile” nature of these force multipliers).
Critical concerns when considering the accessibility of a potential target include infiltration and exfiltration routes/methods, route security concerns for the maneuver element, the requirements for barrier penetration, obstacle negotiation, and survival/evasion considerations during exfiltration of the maneuver element.
Recuperability. The ability of the enemy to repair and return the target to service should be a critical element in target selection and analysis. This will vary, depending on the target, as well as other variables present only during the planning process. The effects of economic downturns/depressions, sabotage by the subversive underground in the manufacturing facilities that build the necessary repair parts, and the ability of the resistance to continue interdiction missions to prevent repair of the damaged/destroyed targets are all factors that must be considered when determining the recuperability of a given target.
Vulnerability. The vulnerability of a specific target refers to the actual ability of the maneuver element, given its organic or available inorganic weapons and assets, to actually cause the requisite damage/destruction needed to accomplish the stated mission (if a unit is limited to individual small arms, a tank unit in a vehicle park will not be particularly vulnerable, while a unit that has access to stockpiled HE munitions, or battlefield recovered munitions and/or anti-tank weapons will be much more dangerous to those vehicles. On the same hand, while an in-flight UAV will not be particularly vulnerable to resistance threats, the personnel that run the UAV, and the UAV itself, while grounded, may be particularly vulnerable to various resistance threats). A target can ultimately only be considered vulnerable if the maneuver element has the capability and expertise (or can acquire/borrow the expertise) to successfully attack the target. Vulnerability will be predicated on the nature and construction of the target (soft-skinned patrol vehicles will be inherently more vulnerable than armored vehicles. Personnel are often more vulnerable than material assets), the amount of damage required to affect it’s recuperability (it’s a lot easier to slash tires and punch holes in the oil pan of a soft-skinned vehicle than it is to damage a M1A2 Abrams MBT), and the assets available to the resistance force (the use of open-source UAV technology to provide the resistance an indirect-fire/air support mechanism, locally-manufactured HE weapons, and the availability of heavy-caliber, long-range sniper systems all provide interesting force multipliers to future resistance elements).
Effects. The positive or negative influence on the civilian population of the operational area, as well as the PSYOP value on enemy personnel is defined as the effect of a specific targeting operation. The effects paragraph of the CARVER format must consider public perception of the destruction of the target (i.e. destruction of a critical bridge in the area may have a severely detrimental effect on the ability of the local civilian population to continue their daily lives. While it will also impact the ability of the enemy to conduct vehicle-borne patrolling operations, it will more negatively impact the civilian population, since the security forces can always resort to airborne transportation methods, using rotary-wing assets, while the local civilian population is simply out-of-luck. Obviously, this would be a negative effect when looked at from the PSYOP angle, since it would negatively impact the public opinion towards the resistance). The effects paragraph must also consider the regime’s reaction to the destruction of a specific target, in relation to their actions towards the local civilian population however.
1.Will regime forces retaliate against the local civilian population? To what degree? Will that impact the civilian population’s willingness/ability to aid the resistance (harsh enough reprisals may terrorize the local population enough that they no longer feel the risk is worth the potential rewards of aiding the resistance. On the other hand, reprisals that result in the death of family members may drive some members of the civilian population to more actively support the resistance. There is an extremely fine balance that must be considered during all operational planning)?
2.Will the resistance’s PSYOP themes be reinforced by the destruction of this target (is one of the major themes that the regime cannot protect themselves, let alone the public? Is a theme that the government is inept, and so the people have no reason to fear reprisals)?
3.Will the local civilian population be alienated from the regime, or more closely supportive of the regime? There is a fine balance that must be kept in the forefront of all planning during UW missions, with the effect on the local civilian population being at the forefront of everyone’s mind, from the highest planner, to the lowest trigger-puller (For the record, doing things that are inherently inimical to the civilian population’s core beliefs….say, pissing on corpses, or burning religious items/texts, or murdering a dozen innocent non-combatants…is ALWAYS going to have a negative effect…just sayin’).
Recognizability. This pertains to the degree to which a target can be easily identified under adverse conditions, including inclement weather, low-light conditions, and other factors, without being confused for other nearby targets (a mission to assassinate a critical member of the regime’s local leadership will be difficult to effect if he has a member of his staff with a close physical resemblance who may be accidentally targeted due to low recognizability. On the same hand, a raid on a commandeered local home used by regime leadership may backfire if the next-door neighbor has a similar-looking house, full of kids, and it gets hit instead. This happens…a lot. For one simple example, look at the number of LEO warrants served on the “wrong house.”).
Once the evaluation criteria for a specific target has been established, the guerrilla planning cell use a numerical ranking system to to rate the CARVER factors for each potential target. In a 1-10 rating, a 10 indicates a highly desirable factor (from the insurgent’s PoV), while a 1 means the target is fundamentally off the chart for mission success. The analysts must tailor the criteria and rating system to suit the particular strategic/tactical situation in their operational area, for their elements, as well as the particular target(s) being analyzed.
Leadership within the guerrilla element must consider the potential adverse effects of a particular target selection, on both future resistance operations and the civilian population. Targets that will hinder civilian population life must be attacked ONLY AS A LAST RESORT!!! The goal is to diminish the regime’s ability to project military force in the operational area, not to piss off the locals. Similarly, unsuccessful guerrilla operations will have a tremendously bad impact on fighter morale within the resistance, probably leading to desertion by less committed individuals. Successful operations, on the other hand, will raise morale, even in the face of other morale-crushing factors, such as insufficient material re-supply, as well as raising the status of the resistance in the perception of the civilian population.
For the resistance element training to conduct necessary future offensive operations to ensure the adequate defense of their community against incursions by regime security forces, proper target analysis/selection, utilizing the doctrinal CARVER process, is a critical element in maximizing the cost-benefit application of necessarily limited manpower/material assets. Think strategically, plan operationally, act tactically.
Article from The Mountain Guerrilla http://mountainguerrilla.wordpress.com/2013/09/04/target-analysis-and-selection-criteria-for-irregular-forces/
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